Thursday, October 20, 2011

Insanity in Britain: With people dying from the cold because they can't afford enough home heating, the government is deliberately raising heating costs in an attempt to make it slightly colder outside

More people die each year because they are unable to afford their household fuel bills than are killed in crashes on Britain's roads, a Government-commissioned report has found.

At least 2,700 people are dying in Britain every year because they are unable to adequately heat their houses, according to the interim findings of a report commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

The number of deaths outstrips the 1,857 people killed in road traffic accidents last year, said Professor John Hills, the academic at London School of Economics who wrote the report on fuel poverty and described it as a 'very serious problem.'

He said that the estimate for people dying from cold is conservative and could be far higher.

“It is making people ill, for some people it is actually killing them, it is worsening hardship for people who are already poor,” said Professor Hills....It is estimated that a fifth of an electricity bill is made up of climate change policies, equivalent to £15 per megawatt-hour. This could more than double in the next decade.